


Unforeseen Circumstances

by apacketofseeds



Category: Fawlty Towers
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Episode: s01e05 Gourmet Night, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-17 11:54:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29225031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apacketofseeds/pseuds/apacketofseeds
Summary: When Kurt and Manuel don’t resurface from the cellar as quickly as expected, Polly runs through every disaster scenario that might’ve befell them.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 5
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	Unforeseen Circumstances

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Small_Hobbit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Small_Hobbit/gifts).



When Kurt and Manuel don’t resurface from the cellar as quickly as expected, Polly runs through every disaster scenario that might’ve befell them. The most dramatic, she dismisses immediately. If one (or both) of them has fallen down the stairs, she would’ve heard something—it wouldn’t surprise her; she scrapes the moss from the steps the best she can when it gets bad, has asked Mr Fawlty a hundred times to patch the hole that drips persistently, leaving half the cellar sodden. If a stack of boxes has fallen on them, that too would’ve made a lot of noise. 

No, it’s unlikely either of them has been crushed under mountains of damp cardboard or broken a limb or two. The bulb has probably gone again, leaving them feeling around for wine bottles in total darkness, holding a lighter up to the labels. 

Kurt has left her in charge of stirring the Hollandaise. His instructions were precise and involved many gesticulated demonstrations: pour the melted butter into the mixture slowly, very slowly, stirring all the while with a light lift of the wrist; he’d take over upon his return and add the remaining ingredients laid out neatly beside the stove. It’s getting quite thick now though, the spoon dragging troughs through the yellow mixture, and she doesn’t want to overdo it. Where are they? 

Manuel crashes through the kitchen door and through to the dining room in a state of total panic. 

Dear God. What if she’s right? What if Kurt has injured himself, on this of all nights? He’ll have to direct the evening’s cuisine from a chair in the corner, hoping the unskilled hands of the Fawlty Towers wait staff can handle gourmet cooking. There isn’t one thing on the menu she feels confident taking on without his guidance.

Abandoning the sauce, she rushes out to the top of the stairs leading down to the cellar. Upon that first, risky step, she stops, holds her breath.

Kurt is crying, and not the kind of sniffling she sometimes hears from Manuel when he’s homesick. He’s full-on bawling. 

The cellar stinks of alcohol. She tiptoes through the maze of boxes toward the source of the dreadful sound: Kurt, standing (barely) against the brick, a three-quarter empty bottle of what looks like gin in his hand as he weeps openly into his sleeve. There’s another bottle tucked into his apron pocket, though that one’s empty.

What happened down here? 

When Kurt spots her, he stops crying and downs the rest of the bottle. He’s a big man, so she lets him, doesn’t fancy wrestling it from his grip. When that empty joins the other in his apron pocket, he slides another bottle seemingly at random from the rack beside him, unscrews the cap, and starts chugging it. The man has a death wish. 

“Is everything all right, Kurt?” She reaches out to him, puts a hand on the bottleneck gently. Easing it from his mouth is simple, though she doubts she’ll convince him to surrender it completely.

“Manuel,” he sobs. His breath makes her eyes water. “I love him!” When he slumps against her, she braces two hands on the wall to hold him up. “I love him so much!” 

She’d doubted her instincts earlier, something she should never do. She thought she’d put two and two together and made five, but this is five staring her in the face with filmy, bloodshot eyes. The extraneous touches as Kurt taught Manuel to scoop seeds from a chili. Cheek kisses that seemed more than just friendly, Mediterranean expression. The fact that when Kurt flicked through her sketchbook and landed on her latest portrait of Manuel, his immediate reaction was offering to buy it.

This is bad. This is really, really bad. The guests are arriving in… now probably. She has to get Kurt back upstairs, try everything to sober him up. There must be some way to solve this particular disaster, one that even she couldn’t foresee.

“Kurt,” she says firmly, lifting his head from her shoulder. “I need you to focus. We’ll talk about Manuel later—”

“Now!” he screams, leaving her eardrum ringing. “I want to talk about him now!” 

“We don’t have time. Come on.” She takes his wrist gently. For good measure, she tries taking the bottle too, but he snatches it away. 

Leading him through the boxes and up the cellar steps is an awkward, appalling affair. Kurt can hardly stand. He trips several times, almost pulling her shoulder out in the process, but she manages to get him back to the kitchen. It’s a lost cause, though. She accepts it. The man is drunk as a skunk and there’s nothing besides time that can change that, and that’s the one thing they don’t have.

For his own safety, she takes the empty bottles from his pocket and stashes them in the sink—he has no problem parting with those. 

As Kurt keeps drinking, she stands between him, the unfinished Hollandaise, and the door leading to reception. It’s quiet now. This is the calm before what she suspects will be a very loud, very awful storm. She inhales, centres herself, brushes her hair back into place after struggling with Kurt left it hanging loose. 

She eyes the door. 

Mr Fawlty must be told, but her legs won’t move.

She’s under the spotlight, in the centre of a boxing ring between an unexpected standoff. In one corner, an irreparably drunk man. In the other, what’s soon to be an irreparably angry man whose debut gourmet night will fail, miserably. This might be the one problem she can’t solve for her ungrateful, under-paying employers. Is she throwing in the towel? Will she finally walk out the front door and never return to this godforsaken hotel again?

The reception’s bell rings, Mr Fawlty greeting their latest arrival. Kurt splutters around a mouthful of red wine. Manuel is nowhere to be seen. 

Polly’s got this. She’ll think of something. The fight starts now.


End file.
